I dreamed last night that I wrote a book. Not a book about knitting or something geeky. A book about my childhood. About growing up in my normal family.

At least I thought we were pretty normal. My college roommate once said to me, You had a brain-damaged dachshund, an alcoholic canary and you used to leave the door open when you went on vacation. There was nothing normal about your family. Well… OK… that’s a different perspective. It all seemed pretty normal to me.

But I have absolutely no desire to write a book about anything, let alone my childhood.

In my dream, I’d managed to write a title (don’t remember it now) and put my name under it. And I searched on the web for advice on how a manuscript should be formatted. And then I ran around asking all of my relatives, What do you remember about this event or that person or yadda yadda yadda. And then I told everybody I knew that I was writing a book. And they were all impressed.

Clearly it was a very strange dream because, as I said I have no desire to write a book. But mostly because I can’t imagine anybody I know either being impressed by it or actually thinking I could pull it off.

So I wonder what this dream is really about?

I had dinner last night with my friend L, who then indulged me with a visit to Teavana. And there I gifted myself with this little teapot. It grabbed my attention right away. I was struck by its organicness. A little “teapot symbology” flier in the shop said that lizards are a symbol of living strong. L, bless her, said that’s you and nodded. I made monkey picked oolong tea in it last night. The tea was very good.

L and I had a wonderful chat. Our last topic was children, and how hard it is to see them launch even though that is what, as parents, we work towards. Her children have launched. My is launching. It seems strange. This year, for the first time, I face taking a vacation without #1 Son. I’m OK with that. I do things by myself or with friends all the time. But I haven’t taken a vacation without #1 Son since he was born. I’m OK with it. But it seems strange. I guess that’s why I’ve been a little blue lately.

And maybe that dream wasn’t about my childhood at all. Maybe it was about holding on to our own children’s childhoods and not forgetting. Write it down. Take pictures. So we can remember after they’ve launched. We can remember what we had and let it blend with what we have, because what we have is good, too. Just different.

And, yes, I’m knitting. But I’m not knitting much. Perhaps I can finish the Tipsy Knitter socks during Lost tonight. I only have about 1 pattern repeat and the ribbing left.